an online magazine for poetry & short fiction

Fake flowers on the table, positioned
to catch sunlight they don’t need, & white
cloud painted on a building’s brick side
while the real gray streets are slick with rain
& me is unconsoled, me is drifting lost, me
is falling from myself again reciting
the same old apologies, the same old hopes
that burn off like morning fog. Right now
I’m a star-tossed polka dot grown huge
& Technicolor against a candy blue sky;
I am the striped interior of your strict
outer packaging. Click the dial to the left,
skip the blurred static & pick up the signal
I’m broadcasting from right now, miles
like ten hours of darkness between us,
& we need just one song to sing us home.

*****

(letter to her from me)

There’s only one sun & there’s only one you
& me & the us that I see is maybe something
only I see. I drove myself one hour into the future
& left you behind. But it’s cold here & even if
the stars shine they don’t shine the right way anymore.
All I can tell you is that there are so many brightnesses
& I want to look at them all with you. All I can say
is that I can’t chart this dark sky alone.
We’re both too old to have bodies that shine anymore;
but there’s this persistent glow & it’s light enough
to see our way by if we let it work like that.
There’s a whole big cynical world that doesn’t need us
to need each other. But there’s a song on the radio
that raises the hair on my arms, that pumps
my heart full of love & the name of that amazingness.
I’m watching the winds tear through
dark grass blades & I know there are no words
to get you to feel that wind. I closed my eyes for a second
& saw a girl say she only wanted to know if she were
kissing someone for the last time & I’m scared
she already made up her mind right then to let me go.

Nate Pritts is the author of three full-length books of poems – The Wonderfull Yeare (Cooper Dillon Books, 2010), Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road Press, 2008) & Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX, 2007). He works online with gifted students through Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth. He is the founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N.